


Moonrakers' Demon

by Eigon



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Moonrakers' Bride by Madeleine Brent
Genre: Boxer Rebellion, China, Gen, Soft Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29513823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eigon/pseuds/Eigon
Summary: This story grew from a scene in the historical romance Moonrakers' Bride, by Madeleine Brent, in which a portrait drawn on the wall of a besieged Mission/orphanage was believed to be a demon by the attacking Boxers, and helped to save the lives of the defenders.So I thought: "What if the picture was Crowley's sigil?"  Because saving an orphanage full of little girls is just what Crowley would do if he was put in that situation.All the characters except Crowley and Beelzebub (and Yama) are from the book.(Moonrakers, although in the title of the book, is a house in England, and has nothing to do with the action in this story).
Kudos: 2





	1. A Gem to Summon Demons

Crowley noticed the girl sauntering down the street of the goldsmiths straight away. Her round straw hat was pulled down low over her face so he could only really see her chin. She was trying to be oh, so casual, which meant that she stuck out like a sore thumb among the market day crowds. That, and the fact that she was more shabbily dressed than even the pickpocket he'd just sent stumbling on his way with a confused expression and a tingling hand which he would not be dipping into anyone else's pocket for the rest of the day at least.  


He loitered beside an oxcart to watch.  


A dog started barking in one of the workshops and the goldsmith working at the front turned to see what was going on The girl snatched a brooch he'd been working on, turned to run – and cannoned straight into the boy who was coming back to the stall with a bowl of soup in each hand.  


The boy staggered, spilling soup down his apron.  


The girl ducked to run past him, giving him a clear view of the goldsmith's stall.  


"Thief! Master – she's taken a brooch!"  


The goldsmith ran round the side of the stall to stop her. She swerved to escape him – and almost made it.  


Crowley made sure that the goldsmith missed when he swung his fist at the girl, grabbed her wrist as she fled past the oxcart, and pulled her into cover with him.  
The hue and cry (or whatever they called it in China) ran straight past them without stopping. Crowley made certain that they'd chase around the streets for a bit before making their way back.  


"You're not a very good thief, are you?" he said casually, holding her wrist in a grip of iron.  


"Let go of me!"  


"And let the goldsmith have you?" The girl stopped struggling at that. "I thought not."  


"Please," she said quietly. "They'll cut my hand off."  


"Should have thought of that before you started this," Crowley said. He hadn't bothered learning Mandarin for this assignment – he was plucking the right words out of her head and, now he thought about it, Mandarin wasn't the only language she had in there.  
"You're not Chinese at all, are you?" he asked, in English.  


She sagged. "I'm from the Mission in Tsin Kai-Feng," she said.  


She'd lost her hat somewhere in the proceedings, and he really should have noticed by now that she had European features.  
"So, what's a nice English girl like you doing in a place like this?" he asked.  


"I didn't know what else to do," she said, and now she sounded on the verge of tears. "There's no money left, and we've only got a little millet and some potatoes left to eat, and little Kimi still needs milk and...."  


"Wait a minute – you've got a baby up there?"  


She nodded, still looking at her feet. "We take in the girl children that nobody else wants. There are fifteen of them there now."  


"But – you're not looking after them on your own, are you? You're only a kid yourself."  


"I'm seventeen." Her chin came up a bit. "There's no-one else."  


"I thought you said it was a Mission?" Crowley said. "Doesn't that imply the existence of missionaries?"  


"There's only Miss Prothero, and she's very old, and very sick, and...."  


".... and you're looking after her too," Crowley finished. He sighed. "Come on, kid. Let's talk somewhere more convenient."

*****

Her name was Lucy Waring, and she'd walked for two hours into Chengfu in order to steal something and sell it to buy food for the orphans. She knew the risks, and she was terrified, and she didn't know what else to do.  


This was most definitely not what Crowley had come to China for.  


Any self-respecting demon would have thrown her to the mob and let them get on with it – and laughed when the local executioner cut her hand off. He looked at her, huddled in the armchair in the room he'd rented at the only decent inn in town, looking pathetically grateful for the cup of tea he'd given her, and he knew that, deep down, he was not a self-respecting demon.  
"You know, I'm glad I met you," he said. It wasn't a lie, exactly, but it wasn't true either. Still, it was a good opening line for what he was about to propose. "You might be able to help me, and in return, I can buy some supplies for the Mission." Which was another extremely undemonic action to add to his list.  


Bless it, the girl had even bigger puppy eyes than the angel when she was grateful. "Would you, sir? I'll do anything...."  


Up to and including risking her hand being cut off, by the looks of things.  
"Call me Crowley," he said. "Come on – let's go shopping. Whatever you need."  


An hour or so later, they were leaving Chengfu behind. Crowley was driving a mule cart, and the girl Lucy was sitting next to him, still looking a little stunned at the amount of supplies they'd managed to pack into the back of the cart.

*****

"Why me?" Crowley had demanded, when he was summoned to Beelzebub's dank office. "Surely Yama's got some local Chinese demons he could send?"  


Beelzebub sighed wearily. "It wazz a bet," they said.  


"What?"  


"I wazz playing cards with Yama. I lost. You are never to speak of thizz outside thizz office."  


"So what do you want me to do?" Crowley asked. There seemed to be no way to wriggle out of this one.  


"One of Yama's minions lozzt a gem. It has the power to summon demons, so naturally Yama wantz it back."  


"And he can't track it down?" Crowley asked.  


"It wazz in the handz of a warlord – Yama was about to claim it back when the warlord was stupid enough to get himself killed in a battle with the English. Something called the Opium Wars. On the battlefield hizz body was looted."  


"So this gem might have been taken back to England?" Crowley asked. This was starting to look more manageable. He might not even have to go to China.  


"Yama thinks they hid the gem in China, in a ruined temple, intending to return for it," Beelzebub said. "He doesn't get on with the Buddhists, but it shouldn't trouble you – it's not like Christian consecrated ground."  


"Got it," Crowley said, unenthusiastically. "Ruined Buddhist temple. Should be a doddle."  


Beelzebub pushed a grubby map across the desk to him. "Somewhere in this area here," they said, "around Chengfu."

*****

Lucy Waring almost laughed when she heard the edited-for-humans version of Crowley's assignment. "No wonder you bought so much food for us," she said. "Do you know how many ruined Buddhist temples there are around here?"  


"I suspect I'm about to find out," Crowley said, scowling at the mule's backside as they ambled down the dusty road.  


"Even the Mission was a Buddhist temple once," she went on. "Miss Prothero came out here with her sister nearly forty years ago, and started the orphanage, and then my parents joined them about eighteen years ago, and then...." The cheerful prattle had got slower and quieter as she went on. "And then there was cholera, and Miss Adelaide and my parents died, and there was only Miss Victoria to carry on."  


"How old were you?" Crowley asked.  


"Six months old," she murmured.  


As if it wasn't heartbreaking enough already, Crowley thought. Really, the only sensible thing to do would be to cut his losses as soon as he got to the Mission, and take off for the hills – leave the kid to manage on her own. This really wasn't his responsibility.

*****

When they got to the top of the hill overlooking the village of Tsin Kai-Feng, and Crowley drew up the mule cart in the courtyard of the Mission, a crowd of ragged little girls in trousers and thin quilted jackets ran out of the main building to greet them. Lucy jumped down, and was soon hip deep in kids, chattering in Mandarin to them and passing them boxes and sacks from the back of the cart to take inside.  


One of the older girls, Crowley noticed, had been crying. When Lucy noticed it too, she spoke to the Chinese girl for a moment. A moment later, she had gathered all the smaller girls together and taken them inside.  
Crowley followed them in. He had a bad feeling about this.  


Lucy had taken the other children to a school room, and was passing pieces of card out. "You can copy Onward, Christian Soldiers," she said. "Yu-Lan and I will finish unloading the cart." She came to join Crowley at the door.  


"What's the matter?" he asked, because it was the expected question. He suspected he already knew.  


Lucy said, "it's Miss Prothero, Mr Crowley...."  


Crowley rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. "She died while you were away, didn't she?" he said.  


Lucy nodded numbly.  
Yu-Lan slipped past them into the corridor, and as soon as she was out of sight of the smaller children she started crying again.  


"What are you going to do now?" Crowley asked.  


To his surprise, Lucy did not start crying. Instead, she stood up very straight, and took a deep breath, and looked him in the eye. "Miss Prothero always said, when you don't know what to do, just do the next thing, and then think again. So I think the next thing is to bury her, and then I'll think again." She paused, looking uncertain again. "Do you think – would you mind helping us to carry her to the chapel?"

*****

The old lady's body hardly weighed a thing and, although Lucy had told him that the Mission was Church of England, they didn't seem to have got round to consecrating the chapel – much to Crowley's relief. He wasn't sure how he would have explained it if he'd had to dance around on the floor as if it was hot coals. The room still had an uncomfortable air of sanctity about it, so he didn't linger any longer than he had to. Lucy and Yu-Lan had put two trestles with a board across them in front of the altar, and he laid the body down on that. Yu-Lan straightened Miss Prothero's nightgown, and came to join Crowley and Lucy outside.  


"How are we going to afford a coffin, Lu-tsi?" She looked as if she was going to cry again.  


Crowley sighed and dug in his pocket. "Here. Take this. Don't thank me." He handed over a gold sovereign.

*****

He wasn't looking forward to digging a grave. It was a lot more work than people often thought, but in the event, he didn't have to lift a finger. Lucy and Yu-Lan settled on a spot beside an old plum orchard outside the Mission walls, and set to it as if they dug ditches for a living.  


"Sometimes local farmers need workers, and we can earn a few cash for the Mission," Lucy said, in a brief break while Yu-Lan shovelled loose earth out of the hole.  
So they did dig ditches, after all, and if Lucy was seventeen, Yu-Lan could only be what? Somewhere around fourteen?  
After they'd dug the grave they set to work in the kitchen to cook an evening meal for themselves and the fourteen other children, and after that they fed the baby, Kimi, and changed her.  
Crowley felt exhausted just watching them. He went and fed the mule so they wouldn't have to do that too.  


After dinner (Crowley had managed to take only a tiny portion of the vegetable soup they'd made), one of the younger children came to him shyly, holding out a book. "Chu-yi, isn't it?" Crowley asked.  


The child nodded. "Please would you read us a story before bed time?" she asked, in English.  


"They're supposed to practice their English," Lucy said quietly. "I'll do it if you don't want to."  


"No – I don't mind." This really had better not get back to Beelzebub. He'd never live it down.  
He took the book and flicked through it. It was a battered copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, with the spine half hanging off. He looked up. All the children were gathered on the floor around his feet, looking up at him. "Once upon a time, there was a widow who had two daughters," he began.


	2. At the Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparations for a siege.

Somewhere in the middle of the following morning, the local coffin-maker came up the hill with the finished coffin balanced precariously on his back. There were a few local people following him, mostly women. One or two of them were carrying babies on their hips.  


"We help delivering the babies when they ask," Lucy said quietly, seeing Crowley watching them. "Miss Prothero was trained as a midwife and I've been helping her since I was fourteen."  


The locals didn't come inside the Mission. Even the coffin maker left the coffin at the gate. Lucy and Yu-Lan went to the chapel with it, and arranged Miss Prothero's body inside it, and hammered down the lid. Crowley hung around in the corridor outside, watching.  


Then they took all the children to the chapel, and Lucy sat down at the harmonium. "Abide With Me, girls," she said. "Loud, for Miss Prothero."  
They sang it like a race, the harmonium starting off at a fairly normal hymn tune speed, and getting faster and faster as the children screeched the words without pausing for breath. By the end of it, the harmonium was half a line behind everyone else. "Well done, girls!" Lucy said.  


Crowley had been thinking about offering to carry the coffin outside, but he didn't need to. Lucy and Yu-Lan each took an end, and then the four next tallest girls clustered around the sides. He let the procession of smaller children pass and tagged on at the end. By the time he got outside, they had already lowered the coffin into the grave.  


Lucy read the funeral service from the Book of Common Prayer, and then the children took turns with the shovels to fill the grave.  
Most of the villagers had drifted away by this point, apart from one woman, holding a baby, who came up to speak quietly to Lucy. There seemed to be a bit of an argument going on, then Lucy shrugged, and nodded, and the woman moved to the foot of the grave, where she stuck a joss stick in the ground. She was looking round for a way to light it when Crowley clicked his fingers, and the end of the joss stick started to glow. The woman blinked at it for a moment, then got to her feet and almost ran down the hill.  
By the time she'd got to the bottom, she would remember that the strange foreigner in sunglasses had lit the joss stick with a match for her.  
Yu-Lan took the children back into the Mission, but Lucy remained beside the grave.  


After a while, it was clear that she wasn't going to move any time soon, so Crowley sauntered closer. "So, what's the next thing?" he asked.  


Lucy looked up, as if surprised he was still there. "Oh, Mr Crowley – I don't know. I can't think of anything," she said.  


"Maybe, tomorrow, you could start taking me round the local temples?" Crowley suggested. It would be something to take her mind off her grief, and the weight of her responsibilities, for a while.  


"Oh, Mr Crowley, I'm so sorry. I owe you such a debt, and I'd forgotten about it."  


He shrugged. "You had other things on your mind."  


The next morning, though, they had just harnessed up the mule to the cart (and Lucy was already working out how much fodder she would need to buy to feed the beast), when Mei-Lin came running out to them. "Lu-tsi! It's Doctor Langdon – he's coming up from the village now."  


"Who's this, then?" Crowley asked.  


"He's the American doctor at Chengfu. He's been very good to us while Miss Prothero was ill. Something important must have happened for him to come all the way out here."

*****

The oxcart Dr Langdon was riding on stopped outside the gate, where there was plenty of room to turn round. He pulled his medical bag from the back of the cart, followed by a medium sized trunk and a couple of boxes and sacks.  
"Hello, Lucy," he said.  


Lucy looked confused. "I'm very glad to see you, Doctor, but – why are you coming to stay with us?"  


The oxcart was already heading back down the hill, so it seemed clear that he intended to stay for some time.  


"I thought you'd need some help," he said. He paused, and held his hand out to Crowley. "I see Miss Lucy has some help already," he said. "Dr Langdon, sir."  


Crowley shook his hand as briefly as he could manage. "Crowley."  


"I don't know where you came from, but I'm thankful that you're here," Dr Langdon said.  


"Are you?" Crowley snarled, suddenly furious with the man. "Did you know what was happening here? These kids are slowly starving to death – they're digging ditches for the local farmers just to earn a few coppers...." He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat. "What have you been doing to help? As far as I can see nobody cares about them!"  


"I care, Mr Crowley," said Dr Langdon in a tired voice that held no resentment. "To my shame I didn't know the whole situation, but I care very much."  


"Why didn't you know?" Crowley demanded.  


"I didn't tell Dr Langdon," Lucy said. "I didn't tell anybody, sir."  


Crowley stared at her in disbelief. "You didn't tell anybody? Of all the stiff-necked, idiotic, stupid...." Bloody humans!  


"I'm here now, Mr Crowley," Dr Langdon said. "I've brought as much food as I could, and there's a rifle and ammunition in my trunk."  


"And just why do you think you needed to bring a rifle?" Crowley asked.  


"You must know there's been unrest in this country for months," Dr Langdon said. "Well, it's started in earnest now. The I Ho Chuan have risen in rebellion, and they're killing foreigners and Christians. All the foreigners who can are heading for the ports to get out of the country. So, if you'll just take me to Miss Prothero...."  
Lucy pointed past him to the plum orchard. It didn't take a genius to understand what the long mound of freshly dug earth was, at the edge of it.  
"So, it's just you, then, Lucy," he said.  


"I'm not leaving the girls!" Lucy said. "Who else is there to look after them?"  


"That's why I'm here," Dr Langdon said. "I thought you wouldn't leave, so I came to help. We need to fortify the Mission. Huang Kung will be sending some of the Boxers to kill you all."

*****

As it turned out, they had a few days to prepare before the Boxers arrived in the village.  
They sold the mule. No-one was prepared to sell them any fodder for it, and one of the farmers made a low but not totally unreasonable offer to buy it. Crowley insisted that Lucy keep the money.  
They blocked up the windows facing out of the building with sacks full of soil, leaving a few strategically placed loopholes for Dr Langdon and his rifle. Crowley produced a pistol from his kitbag, which had certainly not been there before. He didn't like dealing with guns, but they needed more than one weapon to defend the Mission, and his bag was too short for them to believe he'd been carrying a rifle in it. As far as ammunition went, it would be loaded as long as he believed it was loaded.  
The girls had tied carving knives to broom handles.  


They were going to get slaughtered on the first assault.  
Well, Crowley wouldn't – he'd be able to get out of there without any serious damage to his corporation without any trouble, as long as he was prepared to abandon all the kids to die. And, for Satan's sake, he'd read them bedtime stories now, and he knew their names....  
So, yeah, sneaking out and leaving them to die wasn't an option.

*****

There was, of course, another way of protecting the Mission.  
Crowley slipped out and walked round the walls. The front gate with the open hillside was easy to defend, even with only two guns, but the north wall would be much more difficult. There wasn't a good lookout post on that side, and it would only need a few men to climb over the back wall for it to be all over for the defenders.  
He drew his sigil, as big as he could, on the whitewashed wall, in fire from his fingertips. That would anchor his wards, and when he was finished, no attacker would be able to get within twenty feet of the Mission walls.  


"What are you doing?"  
Lucy had followed him out, and was standing with her broom handle spear over one shoulder.  


"Yeah, right – this," Crowley said. "Very superstitious, the Boxers, well known for it," he said. "So this," he indicated his sigil, "is to convince them that the Mission is protected by a demon. Frighten them off, you see?"  


She looked skeptical. "Miss Prothero said we should put our trust in the Lord," she said.  


"Put your trust.... do you want to die?" Crowley asked. "Seriously? How many missionaries do you know of who 'put their trust in the Lord' and were slaughtered? The whole history of Christianity is littered with people who put their trust in the Lord and got killed anyway – didn't your Miss Prothero tell you about any of them?"  


"Yes, but.... wouldn't it be better to put the sign of the Cross?" she asked.  


"They've been killing Christians, remember?" Crowley said. "I mean, if you want to bring all the Boxers in the district here like bees round a wossname, go ahead."  


"Honey pot," she said. She sighed. "I suppose you're right."  


"Anyway, you are not putting a cross anywhere near my.... picture of a snake," Crowley said firmly. "Look, if you want to survive this, you're going to have to use every trick you can to stay alive. Trust me on this – the demon thing will work." He snapped his fingers, and the wards became active all round the top of the hill.  


"I trust you, Mr Crowley," she said. "After all, the Lord sent you to help us when we needed you most."  


There was no point in arguing with blind faith like that, even though Crowley was certain that the only Lord that was involved in this whole disaster of a situation was the Lord of the Flies.

*****

"I'm fed up with fairy tales," Crowley said that evening when the children settled round his feet to hear their bedtime story. "You must have heard these a hundred times. So, I just happen to have brought a magazine with me." He grinned at Lucy. "I don't think your Miss Prothero would approve," he said. He looked around the circle of children's faces and held the book up to the lamplight so they could all see the picture on the front (in full colour) of the highwayman robbing a coach. "This story is called Black Bess, or The Knight of the Road...."


	3. Under Siege

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They may be under siege, but that doesn't mean that Crowley can't have a little fun.

Crowley had lived through better organised rebellions.  


The Boxers didn't seem to have much idea of how to organise a siege. Now, Troy – that had been a well organised siege, or Masada – but that was the Romans; they were always well organised. But this was almost insultingly amateur. Mostly the Boxers seemed to just stay in the village, only occasionally sending a few men up the hill to test the defences.  


Even so, if they kept that up long enough, Dr Langdon would eventually run out of bullets. Crowley couldn't very well tell him that the Boxers wouldn't be able to get close to the walls because he'd erected a magical barrier around the place, after all.  


The most annoying thing from Crowley's point of view was that he was stuck in Tsin Kai-Feng when he should have been going out looking for the demon summoning gem in the ruined temples of the surrounding countryside. Beelzebub wasn't well known for their patience, and didn't take kindly to excuses, even though they had sent him up into the middle of a war zone.  


The kids, though.... They'd never been though a siege before, and they were not enjoying it. They were miserable, and scared, and if this siege went on for too long they'd run out of food.  
Also, he hadn't got to the installment of Black Bess where Dick Turpin made his famous ride from London to York yet (they didn't seem to have noticed yet that he had an endless supply of Penny Dreadfuls to read to them). He couldn't go before he read that out for the kids.  
So, while he was stuck at the Mission, he might as well have a bit of fun.

*****

The first time Crowley went over the wall in the night, he just wanted to scout out where the Boxers were staying in the village, and steal some milk for the baby. Kimi was old enough to be able to survive on mashed up vegetables, but milk would be good for her.  


They weren't even posting sentries. It was laughable. Crowley had plenty of time to milk a goat – the farmer would be surprised when nothing came out of its teats in the morning – and carry the bucket up the hill.  
He put the bucket in the middle of the open ground in front of the gate, where Lucy would see it when it got light enough. Then he climbed over the back wall and dropped down into the courtyard. Just to make sure she didn't miss the bucket, he went up to the lookout post.  


"You should be resting," Lucy said, disapprovingly.  


"Couldn't sleep," Crowley lied. "Thought I heard something, out front." He pointed down. "Looks like someone's left us a present," he said. "Shall I go and get it?"  


Lucy looked down the hill. "I can't see anybody moving about," she said. She settled Crowley's pistol on the windowsill, holding it in both hands to steady it, like he'd shown her. "I'll cover you, if you go out."  


"Just – don't shoot me, okay?"  


She scowled at him. "My aim's better than you seem to think, Mr Crowley," she said.  


Crowley grinned as he retrieved the milk. Lucy and Dr Langdon would believe that it had arrived at the Mission gate by completely natural means, probably a friendly villager bringing it up, nothing supernatural about it at all.

*****

After the success of the raid for milk, Crowley's next raid was just for fun. It was time to make them scared of the snake demon. The Boxers had discovered Crowley's sigil on the wall quite quickly, and had avoided the north side of the hill ever since. They were about to learn that the snake demon was not confined to the top of the hill.  


This time he slipped over the wall just after nightfall. No point in going down after midnight, when they'd all be asleep. There were no sentries again, and most of the Boxers were gathered in one of the biggest houses of the village. Crowley shifted into snake form and slithered through the nearest window.  
He was in shadow at the rear of the hall, but there was a convenient circle of lamplight around a table at the far end where half a dozen men were playing some sort of card game, with other men clustered round making side bets. The air was thick with the smoke of cheap cigarettes.  
Everyone's attention was focused on the table.  


Perfect.  


Making himself small, he slithered carefully forward. All he could see from this angle were bare feet in sandals, shuffling too close together for comfort. One of them would step on him before he could get into the perfect position.  
He worked his way around the table until he could see a wider gap. Then he slid between the feet of the men in the crowd, and hid himself under the table.  
As soon as he was in position, he arranged himself in coils, and began to grow.  
When his head touched the underside of the table, he reared up, growing to his full twenty foot length and hissing dramatically.  


The table flew off somewhere behind him, hitting some of the bystanders. The ones who had been sitting down fell backward into the crowd.  
There were screams.  
It was extremely satisfying to watch.  


Crowley waited for a moment as the men who were still on their feet made a dash for the door, swaying his head to and fro like a cobra. Then he bared his fangs at the few who were still within striking distance. There were more screams, and they turned to run as well.  
It wasn't easy to grin while in snake form, but Crowley did open his mouth to reveal a lot of long, sharp teeth as he surveyed the damage to the room. The scent of fear when he flicked out his forked tongue was delicious.  
He shrank down to maybe five feet long, and left by an open window.  


He was slightly surprised to find that the Boxers were still there in the morning. They were obviously made of sterner stuff than he had thought.  
Before he did anything more about the besiegers, though, there was something inside the Mission he needed to take care of.

*****

Ever since he got to the Mission, he'd had a sort of niggling feeling at the back of his mind. If he'd been back in Europe, he'd have thought it was the first signs of being summoned by some ritual magician. He'd ignored it at first. Chinese magicians didn't use summoning circles like the magicians back in Europe, after all. If he was being summoned, the spell was only strong enough for him to notice it, and not strong enough to actually pull him away from where he was. It shouldn't have been going on for weeks though – no human magician could keep up a summoning spell for that long.  


So something else occult was going on.  
And – he was an idiot.  
He was looking for a gem that summoned demons.  
It wasn't that he'd forgotten that he was a demon himself – pretty hard to forget all that Falling business – it was just that he'd assumed that the gem he was looking for was inert unless it was deliberately activated.  
What if it wasn't? What if it was designed to summon demons all the time?  
If that was so, it must have been gently reeling him in like a fish on a line ever since he arrived in Chengfu – and now he'd been living in the building where it was hidden for weeks.  
It was embarrassing that he hadn't realised it before.  
The question was – where was it hidden?  


The temple had been disused when the Christian Mission moved in, and there were no altars, or statues, or cunningly shaped carvings that hid a button that opened a secret compartment.  
It had to be hidden somewhere that had existed before the Christians arrived, and which they hadn't got rid of.  
All the altars and statues would have been thrown out when the Misses Prothero first arrived, and if there had been anything left after that, it would probably have been sold to keep the orphanage going.  
Still, there had to be something that was left, something that had been overlooked.  


Crowley waited until after lunch to start looking. It was the hottest part of the day, in an exceptionally hot summer, and most of the kids took a nap. The older ones were either on guard duty or in the kitchen. Crowley had gone in there deliberately straight after lunch to pour himself an extra cup of tea, and found Lucy and Chu-yi doing the washing up. That would keep them busy for a while.  


He prowled past the main dormitory, making sure the kids in there were asleep. That was just one big empty room, apart from the sleeping pallets and the usual clutter of the children's belongings. No statues, no carvings, nothing set into the walls, and no little tug of summoning. He stood still for a moment and concentrated. Lucy had a little room of her own down at the end of the corridor. The feeling was coming from there.  


It was almost as bare as the children's dormitory, just a sleeping pallet and a box for the girl's personal possessions, and a few spare clothes on a shelf.  
And a bronze shield, set into the wall, polished like a mirror.  
He laid his hand against it, and that little insistent feeling tugged at him.  


It didn't take long to prise the shield off the wall. As he'd suspected, there was a niche behind it, and in the niche was a leather pouch, and in the leather pouch....  


"Mr Crowley! What are you doing in my room?"  


Crowley jumped. Lucy could move very quietly for a human when she wanted to.  


"It's all right! No need to be alarmed," he said.  


She glowered at him. "Gentlemen don't usually go into young ladies' bedrooms," she pointed out, "and why are you pulling my mirror off the wall?"  


"Look, you remember why I came here in the first place, don't you?" Crowley asked.  


"You were looking for ruined Buddhist temples," she said.  


"I was looking for something hidden in a ruined Buddhist temple," he corrected her. "I think I've found it." He showed her the leather pouch, and shook out the contents on top of her box.  


She gasped. "Emeralds!"  


Crowley picked up the largest emerald and held it up to the light. It was step cut, squared off with faceted corners, and it was engraved with Chinese characters that glowed slightly. If a gem could feel smug, it would have been radiating smugness, now that the demon it had summoned was actually holding it in his hand.  
The rest of the emeralds were smaller, looking like small green pebbles. None of them were magical in the slightest.  


"This is the only one I'm interested in," Crowley said, pocketing the gem that had summoned him there. "You can have the rest."  


She gaped at him. "But this must be worth a fortune! You're surely not going to just give it away!"  


He shrugged. "They were in your room, in your orphanage. Seems to me they belong to you. My – employer – was only interested in the one stone. Dr Langdon can probably help you find somewhere to sell them."  


She made an unamused huffing sound at that. "If we can ever get out of here," she said. "There's supposed to be an army out there somewhere fighting the Boxers, but who knows when they'll get here?"  


"Aren't you supposed to put your trust in the Lord, or something?" Crowley asked.  


"Sometimes," she said, in a little lost voice, "that can be very hard."  


"All right, then, just do the next thing," Crowley said. "Go and show Dr Langdon those emeralds."

*****

"You took your time," Beelzebub complained.  


"Slight complication," Crowley said, handing over the gem wrapped in a handkerchief. "There is a war going on up there, you know."  


Beelzebub glared at him. "You know very well that izz no excuse," they said. "Ztill, you have brought it now. I can finally get Yama off my back. He hazz been mozt annoying."  


Crowley hadn't come back straight away. First, he'd given the Boxers in the village another good scare, and this time they had run away. Chasing people round the village streets in snake form in broad daylight tended to have that effect. He didn't think they'd be back.


End file.
